What is Evernote?

- Before we begin using Evernote and exploreits many powerful features and functions,let's take a quick look at what Evernote actually isand what it can be used for.In a nutshell, Evernote is a digital notebook.It's a digital notebook that can capture,store and index just about any type of datayou can think of, all while syncingto the web and across all of your devices,like Windows PCs, Mac computers,tablets and smartphones.This means the more you store in Evernote,the more powerful and useful it becomes.

And because Evernote is a digital notebookand not a paper one, you can storemore than just what you might write,draw or paste into a paper notebook.Sure, you can write things in Evernote,but aside from text notes, you can add imageslike digital photos you already haveor digital photos you take with your tablet or smartphone.You can record your voice and play it backwhenever you need it.You can copy or clip something you see on a web pageor in another document, and keep it in your notebook.And you can scan things into your notebook, too.

Of course, the real beauty of Evernoteis you can have it with you wherever you go.With Evernote installed on your computer,you can have it running and waitingin the wings for your next command,but when you leave your computer,you can have it on your smartphone or tablet,and everything is synced up with your computer.But storing content in a digital notebookis only half the picture when it comes to Evernote.Getting at that content is equally important.Evernote lets you tag your contentand organize it easily so you can findwhat you're looking for in a jiff.

And with powerful search functionality,you can find the smallest piece of informationwith lightning speed.Just imagine you had a photo takenwith your smartphone and added itto your Evernote notebook.It's a photo of you on vacation,standing next to the welcome signfor the Grand Canyon National Park.Now, to find that photo in Evernote down the road,you just search for Grand Canyon,and thanks to OCR technology in Evernote,that's optical character recognition,Evernote finds and recognizes the text in your photo,and accesses that photo for you.

How cool is that?One last thing before we move on.There are some terms you should be familiar withbefore we start using Evernote, such asthe components that make up Evernote.For example, you'll have notes,a single item stored in Evernote.Now, this could be a PDF, an image,a piece of text that you've typed in,and audio or video file, a screen captureor any combination thereof.We'll also have notebooks, which is basicallya named container used for storing notesin a logical way.

You might have a notebook called Wish Listor Project ABC, for example.At the time of this recording,each Evernote accountcan have up to 250 notebooks.Then we have something called a stack,which is a named container for notebooks.This allows an additional three levels of organizationof your notes and notebooks.You could have your business stackthat contains a project stack that containsall your project notebooks in one placefor each instance.Keep in mind a notebook stack containing10 notebooks counts as 11 notebooksagainst your limit of 250.

There's something called a tag,which is a descriptive piece of text appliedto a note that can be used to identify it lateror group several notes by topic.Each note may have multiple tags or none at all.Then there's something called a clipping,which is the act of capturing contentfrom a source, like a web page or another applicationon your desktop or even a mobile device,and adding it to Evernote.You'll need to understand synchronization or syncing,Evernote's function of keeping an up-to-date copyof your entire Evernote database,aside from the parts you tell Evernote to leave alone,somewhere in the Cloud or on the Internet.

Now, this happens at timed intervalsthat you can configure.And then there are attributes,which are bits of data about each of your notes,also known as metadata.The day it was created, how it was added,what types of media it contains and so on.Each and every note has these,though some have more than others.So now that we have a pretty good understandingof what Evernote is, how are we going to use it?It's time to consider some practical usesfor this powerful app, and that's coming up next.

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Released

5/11/2015

Harness the power of Evernote, a popular cloud note-taking and note-sharing tool for Windows and Mac. This course begins with a look at ways Evernote can help you note and track important items, format notes, and collect notebooks for sharing. Author David Rivers also shows how to take and store photos, screenshots, and even video in notebooks. Plus, learn to use the powerful tagging and search features to keep your notes organized and accessible. The course also covers the notebook sharing and protection features, so your privacy is maintained at all times.